The air arm of U.S. Africa Command will not be assigned many aircraft.

The plan is to reactivate 17th Air Force to provide “theater security cooperation from an air perspective,” said Col. Blake Lindner, head of the 17th AF transition team and deputy director for plans, programs and analysis at U.S. Air Forces in Europe.

The transition team submitted its proposal at the Pentagon Tuesday.

As AfriCom will not have assigned forces at its outset, 17th Air Force will be assigned only a few transport jets for taking senior staff around the continent, Lindner said. If AfriCom were to become involved in a humanitarian relief effort or other operation and need additional manpower, the command would use the usual request for forces process to acquire personnel and planes.

Under the plan 17th Air Force will consist initially of two groups — an air operations center dubbed the 617th, a “tailored entity” that will analyze AfriCom’s air support needs and generate appropriate requests. Lindner’s group is requesting 131 airmen for that unit. The larger part of 17th AF will be the Air Force forces staff, proposed at 155 airmen.

“That’s a very lean but yet capable A-staff,” Lindner said, “that will cover enough expertise to provide organic support as a baseline to support that theater security cooperation requirement.”

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